Olivier Thoumine

Biography

 After completing an engineering degree in the prestigious Ecole Centrale Paris, he carried out my Ph.D. at Georgia Tech (Atlanta), where he was among the first ones to study integrin-dependent mechanotransduction in the response of endothelial cells to hemodynamic forces. During his post-docs at Institut Curie (Paris) and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale (Lausanne), he designed new micromanipulation methods to precisely quantify the response of cells to mechanical deformations, which are still used nowadays. After his recruitment by the CNRS in 2001 in the team of D. Choquet (Bordeaux), he developed biomimetic systems coupled with high resolution imaging and predictive biophysical models, to probe the role of the cytoskeleton and adhesion proteins in growth cone motility and synaptogenesis.

Research Interest

 Neurology